


The Shell You're Inside Of

by WatchMyFavesSuffer



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Anorexia, Atypical Anorexia, Ben Hanscom Has Body Image Issues, Body Image, Bullying, Canon Divergence, Clown-Induced Memory Loss, Eating Disorders, Fix-It, Gen, Internalized Fatphobia, Repressed Memories, Self-Esteem Issues, Self-Hatred, Sort Of, fatphobia
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-21
Updated: 2020-12-29
Packaged: 2021-03-10 19:14:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,178
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28212222
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WatchMyFavesSuffer/pseuds/WatchMyFavesSuffer
Summary: "Ben Hanscom is fat. Well, technically, he used to be fat. But it never really goes away. He knows this. He knows, sure as he knows every building Frank Lloyd Wright ever designed, and what order the presidents and vice presidents went in, and all the other stupid things he memorized when he was a lonely kid hiding away in a library. No matter how much weight he loses, he'll look in the mirror and see the same thing."An exploration of Ben's experience with eating disorders and internalized weight stigma and shame, both during and post-canon. Mix of book and film canon, but set along the film's time frame (ie, 1980's and onward)Also, I have once again used a song as a title to avoid having to think of my own. All credit to the brilliant Nicole Dollanganger, and her heartbreaking song "Please Eat" for this one.
Relationships: Ben Hanscom/Beverly Marsh, background Richie Tozier/Eddie Kaspbrak - Relationship, haven't decided yet--oop, possible losers club poly
Kudos: 13





	1. Ben Hanscom Takes a Swim

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this for two reasons: 1) there is not enough Anorexic!Ben Hascom content imho, and eating disorder-ing my faves is kinda my whole thing, and 2) there is a looot of fatphobia, implicit and explicit, in It (the book, mostly, but it's there in glimpses in the films too) and I want to fix it lol. And frankly, the eating disorder fic I myself have written thus far has not adequately addressed an issue that is deeply important to me-- namely, a liberatory, fat-positive theory of food and body politics. 
> 
> (That being said, there will be a lot of fatphobic sentiments in the beginning of this fic, mostly coming from Ben himself, so please take care of yourself and do not read this if you're not in the right headspace!!) <3

A week after he graduates high school, Ben Hanscom gets on a bus to Idaho. The ride, and the connecting ride on the next bus, take the better part of two days, and he sleeps most of the way. He’s on his way to a job as a camp counselor. He’s supposed to watch over a cabin of 8-to-11-year old boys, teach them some basic wilderness skills, and make sure no one gets eaten by bears. Seemed easy enough, and he’s pretty excited about getting to stay someplace picturesque and wild. He was also excited for the three months he had to reinvent himself before college.

He’ll have to share a small, chilly room with his fellow counselor, but at least they get their own bathroom. He gets there first, and sets about unpacking his stuff: a nice leather-bound journal his mother got him for graduation, a biography of John Adams he was halfway through, his Walkman, clothes and— a letter? He takes the folded paper, with its well-worn creases and handled, unfresh look, out of the pocket where it was zipped away. The page is plain white, other than a gray watermark that says “Autographs”, and a name. _Beverly Marsh_ , it said, in a child’s handwriting with two hearts. Who on _Earth_ was Beverly Marsh? Clearly, she—and this paper— were important enough to him that he’d taken the time to pack it. But why was it so important? It had been less than two days since he left Derry, and he can barely remember knowing anyone by the name of Beverly. He thinks he remembers red hair, but he could be mistaken. Still, he feels a rush of warmth in his cheeks just looking at it. He tucks it away carefully, and resolves to think about it later.

His co-counselor, a college student named Trevor, appears before long. Ben smiles at him. “Hey man. You can have the top bunk, if you want.”

He grunts a vague assent and swings his backpack off his shoulder and on to the top mattress. He climbs the ladder in two steps and flops onto the bed with a creaking of springs. Trevor, he’s pretty sure, would never give him the time of day if they’d gone to school together. Trevor had brownish hair, parted in the middle and falling in his face like Hugh Grant. And he looks like he weighs maybe half of what Ben does, with lightly muscled arms and a flat stomach that he sees in glimpses through one of those tank tops with almost no sides. Ben could die just looking at him, at the difference between them. He crosses his arms over his midsection instinctually.

His hopes that they would be friends hovered somewhere around the zero mark. But Ben was used to loneliness, the way a man with no eyes was used to darkness (but not quite like that, because Ben _had_ experienced being un-lonely, even if the particulars of that feeling don’t immediately come to mind.)

The camp itself is wonderful, set on the edge of a huge forest with a glassy greenish lake. The air is fresh in an almost-magical way that makes him feel more alive just to be breathing it. There’s so much sun and so much sky, like the world is bigger here than it was in Derry. There’s a pool and a rock climbing wall and an arts and crafts cabin, and Ben wishes he’d gone to a place like this when he was a kid. While his childhood seems to be growing fuzzier with each passing second, he still had the overwhelming sense that whatever had happened to him in summertime back in Derry was… distinctly less fun.

He think hard about it, trying to conjure up the summers of his childhood, the temperature of the air, the sense of freedom that school was over. _Someone cut me_ , he thinks suddenly. _Someone named…Henry._ (That night, looking in the mirror as he brushes his teeth, this story is confirmed: he sees a puckered pink-white scar on his stomach in the shape of an H.) The facts seem indisputable, but it’s hard to connect them to the reality of his life. The facts are thin, shadowy things. Someone pulling his shirt over his head, someone snarling in his ear, a knife pressed to his stomach. A harsh burst of laughter, _look at all this blubber_ his assailant, blurred and anonymous in his memory, had barked. He figures he escaped. He can’t remember how he felt, what had gone through his mind, but it surprises him that he felt any will to escape, to live at all. The way that anger-rabid voice growled at him— Ben was so disgusting that he _enraged_ him. He must have been running on pure survival instinct, because how could he want to live after realizing _that_ was how people saw him?

That day, he meets the eleven campers he’s in charge of. He feels an urge, strong as a kick to the stomach, to protect these kids. This one 9 year old, Artie, has thick glasses and a concave chest and never shuts up. He reminds Ben of somebody— a character on TV, maybe. Whatever the reason, he realizes he really loves kids. He’d never thought about it before, but maybe he’d like to have kids of his own one day.

 _Well, for that to happen, you would need girls to be able to look at you without puking_ , a giggling, cruel voice in his mind says. _Best of luck with that, fat boy._

His responsibilities during the 5 weeks of camp were to lead hikes, help build the bonfire at night, and to teach swimming, basic shelter-building and wilderness survival. He loves teaching them to build lean-tos and design mock-ups of cabins with popsicle sticks (and he can be suddenly, surprisingly authoritative when he’s building something, or explaining it to others. He thinks, not for the first time, that maybe he’ll major in architecture, though the dream of actually getting to construct a grand building like the ones he’d studied feels impossibly far away.) He reads to them from comic books at night, doing funny voices for the characters. (The voices come to him from somewhere within the mire of his memory, silly British butler accents and thick Irish brogues and trembling falsettos meant to represent old ladies.) He has little dance parties and games of tag by the fire when he needs to tire the kids out before they go to bed. It’s great. There’s only one part of the job that’s…less than ideal: swim lessons.

Ben’s a very capable swimmer, and not bad at diving either. That wasn’t the problem. There was simply no way in Hell he was going to remove his shirt. (Sure, he’d gotten a little thinner during his growth spurt in sophomore year, but he was still bigger than almost everyone he knew. As he meets ever other male counselor, he looks desperately for someone heavier than him. No one materializes. That was painful just to admit to himself, that every man around him, including the 40-something woodsman who ran the camp, looked so much better and stronger than him.) Showing the world his huge, disgusting, soft stomach was out of the question. And wearing a swim shirt was pretty much just as humiliating. He looks at the stretchy garment his mother bought him, holding it against his body in the mirror, and grimaces. _Why don’t you just wear a t-shirt that says ‘I’m a Huge Fatass’ instead? It’ll make the same point,_ the voice in his head says. But it’s the (slightly) lesser of two evils, so he grits his teeth and wears the shirt.

This first swim lesson is on his third day at camp. He approaches the pool with his arms crossed across his chest. _As if that helps anything._ He wishes fervently there was such a thing as a swim sweatshirt. Ben is supposed to take the kids who already know how to swim and help them learn new strokes. The beginners are being taught by a Red-Cross certified swim instructor and lifeguard. And, because God is apparently dedicated to torturing Ben, he has a row of abs hard as lumps of diamond beneath his skin. He swears he can hear stifled laughter every time he turns his back on this modern-day Adonis, whose blonde hair turns dark and clings to his forehead after he gets it wet. He never even learns this guy’s name; it’s as if they exist on two entirely separate planes.

He makes a vow to himself, as he demonstrates the breaststroke for the kids in the shallow end (and thanks God that he can blame his burning eyes on the chlorine) that he’s not going to college this fat. He’d wanted to lose weight for a while (he thinks) but this was the last straw.

Ben makes a plan. He’s glad that his brain (“You’re like Silly Putty, you just pick everything up!” his mom would gush) holds on to useless information, like the contents of his sophomore year health textbook. How many calories are in a pound of fat. Average basal metabolic rate of an adolescent male. Formula for Body Mass Index. There’s a scale, big and rickety like the ones in doctor’s offices, in the camp’s infirmary, and he weighs himself every day.He weighs 230 when he first steps on the scale (if he rounds down). That puts his BMI just below 31. He looks for the number on the plastic-covered chart tacked to the wall in the camp infirmary, yellowed and curling at the edges. Past the blue underweight category (He remembers, in the same wan and disconnected way that all his memories seem to work, other boys his age who got bullied for being too skinny. While that’s probably no fun either, he’d rather have that in a heartbeat. To which the voice says _Ha! in your dreams, Haystack_ ), the green “healthy weight” section, the mustard-colored “overweight”, and into the garish red “obese”. It’s not surprising, not really, but confirmation of it makes his chest tighten, as though he were having an allergic reaction.

First goal: get down to 210.

Starting the very next day, he gets up well before his campers, 5:00 am, and runs. He uses his hour of downtime in the afternoon to swim laps. And at night, he waits until Trevor is asleep, gets on the floor, and does crunches and push ups until he can’t keep his eyes open. He takes the fancy journal he got as a graduation gift and keeps a list of foods he’s allowed to eat and foods he’s not. The lunch they serve in the mess hall changes every day, making it difficult to plan, so he swears off lunch altogether. He can have an apple, an orange, or a banana for breakfast, and drink an apple juice or a low-fat milk at lunchtime. No s’mores under any circumstances, even if he’s helping one of the little kids roast one and the marshmallow oozes smokey-sweet goo on to his hands and he thinks _whats the harm in one, just one marshmallow, or just licking some off my hand—_ not even then. Just wipe the gooey marshmallow, or the smear of chocolate, off your fingers and pretend your mouth isn’t watering. _Take a swig from your thermos and keep your eye on the prize, Hanscom._ Dinner is pizza on Fridays— pizza is firmly on the “no” list, so he drinks water or coffee on Fridays. Other days, he lets himself have whatever vegetable they offer, which is usually tasteless and barely thawed, and juice or milk (whichever one he didn’t have at lunch.) It’s tidy, predictable. He hates the word _diet_ , it reminds him of shallow suburban moms, so he just thinks of this as The Plan.

He never liked the taste of coffee before, but it was the only way to stay awake, so he learns to love it. When he feels himself wanting to lapse into sleep in the middle of the day, he goes into the bathroom, looks into one of the scratched-up mirrors, and slaps himself across the cheek. _Get your shit together, Hanscom_. He splashes cold water on his face and gets back to it.

One day towards the end of camp, they take a hike around the lake. Trevor is leading the pack and he’s bringing up the rear. He does a headcount (and that’s 90% of his job, he is realizing, counting and recounting the kids every four seconds like they’re ducklings following in their mother’s trail) and he comes up one short. He counts again, just to be sure. He was right: there were 10 instead of 11. Artie was missing.

“Stop! Trevor, stop!” Ben calls to his fellow counselor. The words barely scrape their way out of his throat, coming out a hoarse yell. “Ok, everyone. Go stand by Trevor and _do not move_.”

He takes off running the way they came. “Artie! Artie, can you hear me?” He screams at the very highest volume he can achieve. His heart is hammering like every beat is driving a nail into his heart. The world starts to spin around him, and saliva floods his mouth like he’s about to throw up.

 _You said you would save them. You said no one else would die._ He has no idea what these words mean, but they come to mind unbidden and drive his heart to thud harder and faster. “ARTIE!” Down an embankment, he catches the glint of sunlight off of glass. He takes off towards it. When he reaches the ledge, he throws himself over and skids down the sheer dirt face, ruining his clothes.

Sure enough, the glint was the glare of light off of Artie’s Coke-bottle glasses. The kid is down there, crying, trying without much success to scrabble his way back up to the path.

“Ben!” The kid cries, and grabs Ben around the legs. He presses his tear-wet face into the hem of Ben’s shirt, which is wrecked with dirt, and a bit too loose on him now anyway.

Ben, panting, squeezes the kid’s shoulder wordlessly. Then he tousles his hair and hoists him up on his shoulders so he can find his way up to the ledge of the embankment. His terror, which had climbed its way from somewhere deep inside of him until it was creeping up his throat and choking off his air supply, starts to sink back down, shrinking out of sight. He pulls himself back up to the ledge (with a small amount of difficulty, but certainly less than he would have four weeks ago.)

That weekend, a counselor from the girl’s camp (the girls’ cabins were situated on the other side of the lake, and the campers only interact on Saturdays) approaches him. Ben hasn’t said more than two words to any of the girl counselors— what would be the point? He doubts they would like him any more than the counselors on this side of the lake did. Besides, he didn’t want to embarrass a girl by inviting any accusations or jokes that he might be dating her. So he kept his distance. Until Katie, a short blondish girl who rarely makes eye contact, walks up to him while he’s sitting on a log by the bonfire.

“You’re Ben, right?”

She’s average— average build, average face, still has braces despite being 17 or 18–-but Ben thinks she is maybe a million times more beautiful than he is. He can’t fathom why she might want to speak to him.

“Yeah!” He clears his throat. “And you’re...”

“Katie.”

She’s in these bulky khaki shorts with a big belt and a thermos on a carabiner. Something about these big, aggressively unfashionable shorts is wildly endearing. A sheen of sweat stands out on his brow, from lugging the wood to build the fire. He nervously mops it up with the sleeve of his sweatshirt

“Right. I think I’ve seen you around.”

“I heard you saved a kid who went missing on Thursday. Everyone was talking about it.”

“Really?” He can’t help his eyebrows shooting up in shock and wonder. It's hard to believe anyone talked about him. He tried his hardest to be invisible, silently reading his book or exercising out of everyone's sight whenever possible.

“Yeah. So like, what happened?”

“Oh, he just wandered away from the group and I found him down in an embankment in the woods. He was crying and everything— he was only gone for maybe ten minutes, but it was pretty rough for him, I guess. He’s a good kid, though. Artie? With the glasses? Anyway, it wasn’t a grand rescue or anything, I just happened to be the one who noticed he was missing and— I’m babbling. Sorry.”

“No, no, it’s okay! Well, I think it’s really impressive. And I’m sure Artie’s mom will feel the same way.”

“Oh, well, thanks. That’s very kind of you.”

They stand in silence for a few agonizing moments. “You can go back to your friends now of you want.” He says.

“Actually, I was wondering if I could sit down?”

Oh. Now it all made sense. She’d only approached to him so she could ask him to get up so she could sit next to the fire. All that talk about rescuing Artie was just politeness.

 _What, did you think she was_ flirting _with you?_ The voice in his head cackles. _She just wants you to get up so she can sit down without worrying about you sweating all over her. She’s probably worried you’d block out the moon with all your blubber anyway._

“Oh yeah, of course!” Ben gets up and offers her the seat where he’d just been. “My mom taught me to always give up my seat to a lady.” He laughs lamely.

“Actually, I— nevermind.” She smiles at his shoes.

It doesn’t occur to him until years later that she might have meant that she wanted to sit _next_ to him. But that was impossible, wasn’t it?

The last day of camp, after making each kid a little painted rock at the arts and crafts cabin to take home as a souvenir, and packing up all his stuff (he sees the autograph page, and the girl named Beverly Marsh who lives there in blue ink, and it surprises him all over again) he heads to the infirmary cabin for a final weigh in.

He’s lost 16 pounds over the past five weeks.

_Not good enough._


	2. Author's Note

So I'm considering orphaning this work and rewriting. I reread the part in It that discusses Ben's weight loss, and it's actually pretty great (aside from some fatphobia, and the fact that it seemed to be mostly motivated by spite in a way that feels weird to me) I think I could rewrite to be less canon-divergent, and maybe include some bits of this chapter? I would love some feedback on this 


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